Supervision or monitoring of various technical systems, such as e.g. power network systems, is of great importance for ensuring proper functioning of the technical system and for enabling right action to be taken. It is important that the monitoring allows the operator thereof to quickly detect any fault conditions and also to act rapidly upon such fault conditions.
A monitoring system or supervisory control system comprising display units that show different parts of the system being monitored is a valuable tool for supervision and monitoring purposes. An overview picture shown in the display unit is a particular example of a useful way of e.g. supervising and also controlling the system status. By means of such overview picture, the operator obtains situation awareness and information needed for a decision making process.
For the supervision to be efficient the overview picture cannot be allowed to be too cluttered and therefore a lot of information is in general omitted. Detailed information related to objects of the overview picture is however often required for making well-founded decisions. Such detailed information may be available from the overview picture, presented for example by having the operator clicking on the object and opening a new window disclosing the desired detailed information. However, the overview picture is then not visible, which is obviously disadvantageous.
Another disadvantage of many currently used supervision systems is the need to perform several clicking operations in order to be able to take action when required, for example upon detection of a fault condition. The operator may need to open several windows in order to be able to remedy the fault. Valuable time is therefore lost.
There are thus several considerations to make when designing supervision systems, for example balancing the need for detailed information and the need for an easily graspable overview picture and to allow fast action to be taken.
From US 2007/0185987 an apparatus for monitoring a computer system component is known. Detailed information for and control of a computer system component can be obtained from an overview by means of an identifier associated with the computer system component. An effort to improve the monitoring of computer systems is thus presented.